She tried to duck her head away from me, but I got one hand cupped around her jaw and forced her face up to mine. “And before you decide, think about this: how hard would it be for me to get carried away and wring your neck like a chicken’s? Everyone around here already thinks I’m Hannibal Lecter. What the hell have I got to lose?” Maybe she was ready to talk by then, but I didn’t give her the chance. “Your friend Detective Kennedy may not be my biggest fan, but he’s a cop, just like me. If you turn up beaten to pulp, or God forbid dead as a doornail, don’t you think he’s going to look after his own? Or do you seriously think he’ll care more about some bone-stupid skanger tramp whose life wasn’t worth a fiver to anyone in this world? He’ll throw you away in a heartbeat, Imelda. Like the piece of shite you are.”

I knew the look on her face, the slack jaw, the blind black eyes stretched too wide to blink. I had seen it on my ma a hundred times, in the second when she knew she was about to get hit. I didn’t care. The thought of the back of my hand cracking across Imelda’s mouth almost choked me with how badly I wanted it. “You didn’t mind opening your ugly yap for anyone else who asked. Now, by Jesus, you’re going to open it for me. Who’d you tell about me and Rosie? Who, Imelda? Who was it? Was it your slut ma? Who the fuck did you—”

I could already hear her spitting it at me like great slimy gobs of poison, Your alco da, your filthy dirty whoremaster da, and I was all ready and braced for it to hit me when her mouth opened wide and red and she almost howled into my face, “I told your brother!”

“Bullshit, you lying bitch. That’s the crap you fed Scorcher Kennedy and he lapped it up, but do I look as stupid as him? Do I?”

“Not Kevin, you thick bastard, what would I be doing with Kevin? Shay. I told Shay.”

The room went soundless, a huge perfect silence like snowfall, as if there had never been a noise in all the world. After what might have been a long time I noticed that I was sitting in the armchair again and that I was numb all over, like my blood had stopped moving. After a while longer I noticed that someone upstairs had a washing machine on. Imelda had shrunk into the sofa cushions. The terror on her face told me what mine must look like.

I said, “What did you tell him?”

“Francis . . . I’m sorry, right. I didn’t think—”

“What did you tell him, Imelda.”

“Just . . . you and Rosie. That yous were heading off.”